‘Os Lusíadas’ in Chinese

In the same year that a decisive step was taken in the promotion of Portuguese culture in China through the publication of a Collective Summary of Portuguese Culture in Mandarin another highly extensive project was completed. The latter involved opening up one of the greatest works of Portuguese literature with the publication of a Mandarin language version of Os Lusíadas. It took six years for Beijing born Zhang Weimin to transfer the approximate 9,000 verses including the resounding “As armas e os barões assinalados” and “Sem à dita de Achiles ter enveja” into character script. And to better assist Chinese readers in understanding the text, the translator further added around 900 notes detailing Greco-Latin mythology, geography and history.